Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2015 - Page 50

The Rebirth of Cool
Wanting to make office fun & functional,
Skanska CDF launches an ambitious development
project at the Helsinki Airport
Improving productivity is what more and more companies are looking for today.
Updating the entire concept of today’s office is very much linked with this goal. Björn Mattsson,
the newly appointed Managing Director for Skanska Commercial Development Finland,
says that companies should recognise how the ways of working have changed over the years.
“T
here is a war for talent going on and
in order to attract the best people,
companies need the best premises,”
he sums up.
The problem, of course, is that it’s
getting increasingly difficult for companies to know where they are going to be in
five years – or two years, for that matter.
At Skanska CDF, this equation is solved by
adding a good degree of flexibility into the
mix: what is needed now is office space that
lives and breathes according to the needs and
wishes of the tenants.
No More Desk Duty
Skanska believes that the offices of the
future will be central nodal points at which
co-workers can get together in different
“constellations” – and find ways of working that suit themselves and their organisation better. This means that companies must
abandon the old philosophy of simply having people sit by the desks. In the future, we
will see more offices which feature silent
rooms for work that requires intense focus,
livelier rooms for teams and projects, phone
48 Nordicum
booths and “hot desks” for someone just
popping in and out.
“We want to explore if it’s possible to
make the office ‘cool’,” Mattsson says with
a smile.
Under Skanska’s Activity-Based
Workplaces (ABW) concept, the space is
simply used more effectively and more creatively – and this will bring savings to the
company as there are less square metres.
Giving the employees the premises and the
tools to do their work in a better way – a
fun way, even – will boost employee satisfaction and productivity. Mattsson points
out that the old days of “management by
Excel” are over:
“People’s wellbeing is [ܙH[